


A Day of Reminiscing

by i_am_made_of_memoriies



Series: Mechtober 2020 [1]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Aurora reflects, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Mechtober, but lesbians make it better, fuck royalty dude
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:07:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26756272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_made_of_memoriies/pseuds/i_am_made_of_memoriies
Summary: Written for day one of Mechtober (Aurora/Stars)Aurora takes some time to reminisce on her past
Relationships: The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina
Series: Mechtober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949050
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	A Day of Reminiscing

**Author's Note:**

> I love Aurora a lot! That's it! That's the fic!
> 
> I have borrowed some ideas from people! First, the idea that Aurora fired the first shot during the Cyberian revolution comes from Kris from the mechscord, who drew that idea from Russian history. Second, the VR window thingies in the palace come from Ellis from the mechscord who offered this Massive Brain Idea! So thanks guys!!

Aurora had been alive for far longer than she could possibly remember and she lived with those who shared that view of life. And though she could not remember the number of years she had been alive, she knew that the vast majority of that time was spent in the stars; she was a starship after all. She considered her lack of quantitative knowledge concerning her life strange; numbers and statistics were the easiest thing for her to comprehend, yet that one particular quantity escaped her.

Perhaps it was a flaw in her programming; her life was deeply tied into her sentience and humanity, and humans should not be able to quantify a life that exceeded several millennia. Yet despite her inability to remember how old she was, once every few decades, she would reminisce. She would not consider her reminiscing a conscious choice; she had no reason to pick a point of time in the arbitrary cycle of days and use that time to sift through memories. Yet it always happened without fail.

Aurora found herself reminiscing on this particular “day”. There was a lull on the ship–not quiet enough for her to worry about her crew, but quiet enough that Nastya did not have to scramble about the ship, patching up bullet holes. She slowed her pace down slightly and relaxed, drifting back through memories of countless planets, star systems, and peoples. 

She first remembered Cyberia. That, of course, was quite fitting, as Cyberia was her erstwhile home regardless of her feelings towards it. 

_ Aurora looked down at blocks and blocks of rectangular, grey buildings, all arranged in a perfect grid. The curtains of small boxy windows were pulled closed; she could feel the residents’ discomfort and yearning for privacy from a simple glance at their windows. Aurora already knew that she did not like Cyberia.  _

_ In some strange way, she could have considered this day the day of her birth, simply because she did not exist the day before, but she did today. The form she was in existed the day before, but it was not her; it did not have her mind or her opinions or identity. The day before, she had been The Starship Aurora, but on this day, she was Aurora. She was not human, but she was far, far more than a simple machine, and she took deep pride in who she was.  _

_ She shifted her gaze past the identical, monotonous buildings to the glinting, gilded palace, lit up dully by grey light filtering through thick clouds. The windows were opaque–yet just transparent enough that one would expect themselves to be able to see inside, even though the interior was sufficiently obscured from the outside world. Aurora began to think that Cyberians despised being perceived.  _

_ Aurora found herself turning back to the bunker where she had woken up. Scoffing to herself, she cursed the engineers who refused to give her complete autonomy. Just because they were afraid of her power did not mean that they had to control her. Aurora swore to herself that one day she would escape.  _

Aurora chuckled at that memory, her lights flickering slightly. It pleased her to know that she achieved her goal. Now, she had all the autonomy she wanted, despite the sweet robot claiming to be her pilot; he was simply there to take over steering when Aurora had better things to do (and those better things were almost always Nastya).

Her memory turned to her last few days on Cyberia; describing those days as fraught would be quite an understatement.

_ Aurora cursed those who had taken away parts of her autonomy for the umpteenth time, except this time she agreed with her orders somewhat. Steeling herself, she aimed one of her guns at the royal palace, letting a devastating shot fly and crash into the opaque windows. The windows sparked and shattered, the VR buffers crumbling to pieces. She saw the royal family scramble from their dragon’s den and into the cold outside, naked to the world. It was what the cruel overlords deserved. Aurora had seen Cyberian workers starving, their children cold and hungry as they labored day after day just to add another gold bar to the Tsar’s hoard. _

_ She fired myriad shots that day, and though the first few felt righteous, she began to worry as the destruction continued. She had heard of Robotnik Yenin, and he seemed just as corrupt. Was she destroying this system to make room for another, equally horrible one? She wanted nothing more than to stop firing and take a moment to reflect, but her programming did not let her.  _

_ Finally, she was allowed to cease her firing. The former royals were dead, their bodies sprawled unceremoniously on beds of the rubble of their former safe-haven. Aurora was scared. _

She did not enjoy dwelling on that memory. Even after centuries, she was not sure if her actions were right, but she turned her cameras to glance at Nastya napping in a pile of blankets and pillows, one hand pressed to Aurora’s wall, and she knew that if she had done anything differently that day, she would never had gotten to know Nastya. And without the fall of Cyberia, Nastya would have never been free. Without the blood in Aurora’s past, she would never have been able to bond with Nastya, and despite the fact that she was one of the royals Aurora was charged to kill, Nastya was different from her ancestors. So Aurora continued to reminisce with an impartial eye, because her past, despite the horrible moments, led her here. And there was nowhere else she would rather be.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a solid like 30 minutes okay


End file.
